the ordinary observer
overlooks, and they encourage the reader to
seek entertainment in fields and woods. Most of
his nature writings are suitable for pupils in
grades from the fifth to the eighth. Some of
his books are _Beyond the Pasture Bars_, _A
Watcher in the Woods_, _Roof and Meadow_, and
_Where Rolls the Oregon_. ("Wild Life in the
Farm Yard," from _Beyond the Pasture Bars_, is
used by permission of The Century Co., New York
City.)

WILD LIFE IN THE FARM-YARD

DALLAS LORE SHARP

I want you to visit a farm where there are turkeys and geese and
guineas. If you live in New York City or in Chicago you may not be able
to do so for some time. Then take a trip to the market or to the
zooelogical gardens. But most of you live close enough to the country, so
that you could easily find a farmer who would invite you out to see his
prize gobbler and his great hissing gander.

However, I shall not wait to _send_ you for I am going to _take_
you--now--out to an old farm that I loved as a boy where there are
turkeys and geese and guineas and pigs and pigeons, cows and horses and
mules, cats and dogs, chickens and bees and sheep, and a hornets' nest
and a nest of flying squirrels in the same old grindstone apple-tree,
and a pair of barn owls in the old wagon house, and--I don't know what
else; for there was everything on the old farm when I was a boy, and I
suppose we shall find everything there yet.

I want you to see the turkeys. I want you to follow an old hen turkey to
her stolen nest. I want you to watch the old gobbler turkey take his
family to bed--to roost, I mean. For unless you are a boy, and are
living in the wild portions of Georgia and the southeastern states, you
may never see a wild turkey. For that reason I want you to watch this
tame turkey, because he is almost as wild as a wild turkey in everything
except his fear of you. He has been tamed, we know, since the year 1526,
yet not one of his wild habits has been changed.

So it is with the house cat. We have tamed the house cat, but we have
not changed the wild, night-prowling hunter in him. You have to smooth a
cat the right way, or the _wild_ cat in him will scratch and bite you.
Have you never seen his tail twitch, his eyes blaze, his claws work as
he has crouched watching at a rat's hole, or crawled stealthily upon a
bird in the meadow grass?

So, if you will watch, y